OLIVIA ATTWOOD does not mince her words.
She raved about plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures while most line-free celebrities were still claiming good genetics — famously ranting, “If I want my mouth to look like a swollen b*tthole, that is my choice.”
Rumours spread last week that Olivia Attwood’s two-year marriage to footballer Bradley Dack was in dire straits[/caption]
Pictures showed Olivia partying in Ibiza with close friend and radio co-host Pete Wicks[/caption]
Olivia has brushed off the rumours of a rift with Brad, simply saying such claims are just part and parcel of working in the public eye[/caption]
And she has never shied away from discussing the messiness of maintaining romance and friendships in the public eye.
Rumours spread last week that her two-year marriage to footballer Bradley Dack was in dire straits as she was seen without her wedding ring — following pictures showing her partying in Ibiza with close friend and radio co-host Pete Wicks.
But the 34-year-old kept a level head. “If I had something to say, I’d be saying it on my own Instagram story,” Olivia tells me, just a few days after she landed home from Ibiza.
“All the gossip and stuff — people message me and go, ‘Oh, have you seen this?’
“And, I do, but I’m quite disconnected from that stuff. Because I just think that, if you’re in this industry — and believe me, there are many wonderful perks, I live a privileged life — it’s just a sidebar of this job. I just take it . . .”
Olivia and Brad, 31, have been challenged by some considerable setbacks as a result of their demanding lives in the public eye.
Having taken the mantle of much of ITV’s TV programming, with shows including Bad Boyfriends, The Price Of Perfection, Getting Filthy Rich, Loose Women, This Morning and upcoming cooking series The Heat, any semblance of work/life balance is a fallacy.
And when Olivia gets home, she has nothing more to give.
‘Not much left’
“At the minute, in the last year, there’s been no balance at all,” she reveals. “I don’t say that in a way of trying to get my violin out. It’s been a conscious decision.
“When you want something quite extraordinary, you have to do the work. You have to show up, and that’s what I’ve been doing. But I would be lying if I said it doesn’t have an impact. Of course it does.
“And me and Brad are in a place now where we’re trying to work out how to connect better, because I give a lot of myself to this job.
“When I come back home in the evening, there’s not much of me left.
“So, we are thinking at the moment of how we can have that time together. Even if just it’s a dog walk and we don’t take our phones with us.
“With Brad’s job as well [he returned to Gillingham FC in 2024], we can’t just book a week away. Logistically, it’s a f***ing nightmare.
“Again, I’m not getting my violin out, because we’re both very lucky people. And it’s a small price to pay to do these amazing jobs.”
I don’t feel like I need to make everything super-vanilla to get booked for jobs. I’m a fun girl to hang out with, but I am also really professional.
Olivia also questions whether she is being too honest and transparent — especially now she is fronting wholesome shows such as This Morning.
She admits: “Sometimes I get these little voices in my head that go, ‘Oh, you’re now being referred to as a This Morning host — maybe you shouldn’t post that crazy Ibiza reel where you’re falling off a boat.’
“But then I’m like, ‘Well, no, because that’s what I do in my downtime — and actually, a lot of people on telly do that too. They just don’t choose to show it.
“Maybe I can be this new era of TV host when I have a really fun life outside of my job. I don’t want to lose that honesty and transparency.
“I’m not pretending to be anyone I’m not. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not doing anything wrong. And, when I come to work, I’m really professional. I don’t feel like I need to make everything super-vanilla to get booked for jobs.
“I’m a fun girl to hang out with, but I am also really professional.”
But even before this latest bumpy boat ride, it was not all plain sailing for Olivia and Brad. “The beginning of our relationship was messy,” she says. “We went back and forth, and there were people in between.
“So, you kind of pull back and you go, ‘OK, humans are flawed. As long as we’re all trying our best 99.9 per cent of the time . . . you’re never going to get perfect from anyone.’
“No one has a flawless relationship. And Brad and I have been up and down — we’re quite open about that.”
She certainly has.
The former Love Islander was spotted without her wedding ring last week[/caption]
Husband Brad, right, is a footballer for League Two outfit Gillingham[/caption]
Another price to pay is the couple’s home base. In 2021, a few years after getting engaged and while he was still playing for Blackburn Rovers, Olivia and Brad bought their dream house in Cheshire.
They spent time and hundreds of thousands of pounds renovating it, with Olivia sharing snippets of the £1million mansion they share with rescue dogs, Lola and Stitch, with her followers.
But in the past year, since Olivia’s London-based work went up 12 notches and Bradley’s job took him permanently to Kent, the place has stood like an empty relic to the life they were going to have.
Now the couple have made the sad decision to sell up.
“The house is going to go on the market very soon,” she sighs.
“I had this apartment in London that I was just using as a base for filming. And that’s what it was meant to be, but now we’re living here.
“That’s our family home in Cheshire, but we’re not in it. So, we’ve been umming and ahh-ing, because we’re both kind of emotionally holding on to that house. We love it so much. It’s just that Cheshire doesn’t work for us any more.”
I want to be that safe set of hands where someone makes a TV show and they think, ‘Oh, Olivia should host this’.
I first met Olivia in 2017, hours after she landed back on UK soil following her scene-stealing turn in season three of Love Island.
The ITV series was at the height of its success, and Olivia — a former motor-racing grid girl — made no bones about the fact that she would love to segue into mainstream TV.
She and then-boyfriend Chris Hughes, who she coupled up with on the show, planned to front their own fly-on-the-wall series together, Crackin’ On. But the night before the press launch, they had an almighty bust up and split for good.
Unsurprisingly, Chris did not show up the following day. But Olivia did, braving our questions and admitting it was slightly awkward to be promoting a show about their romance when they were very much over.
She was vulnerable, but candid.
Honesty has always been her MO.
It is a policy that also makes her an excellent host and mentor for Bad Boyfriends.
‘A lot naughtier’
As fans of the first season will remember, we see Olivia put a slew of so-called “bad boyfriends” through their paces, as the girlfriends who they have lied to and cheated on gather them under false pretences.
The girls then put through their lads through the ringer to change their ways.
It is something Olivia admits, in the first few minutes of episode one, she is more than familiar with. As she herself says: “I had my own bad boyfriend” in Brad.
The couple dated before her Love Island stint, and Brad cheated on her — prompting her to get her own back by entering the dating show and snogging a load of men on national TV. They reunited soon after she and Chris broke up and this time they got married.
It is for this reason that she takes a more nuanced approach to advising the show’s embittered girlfriends.
“On reflection, this lot made season one look like angels — they’re a lot naughtier,” she says.
“But the issues run deeper, and we dig a bit deeper too into why certain behaviours are happening, and why certain behaviours are being tolerated. The emphasis is very much on each partner: why are you in this relationship? Do you want to work it out or do you want to walk away?
“Because it’s all well and good bringing your boyfriend into this situation, but then you also have to ask yourself: why are you there? Why are you tolerating that?
“That’s a really interesting part of human psychology. And it’s something we can all relate to.”
Looking ahead, Olivia is not letting her foot off the gas.
We will soon see her teaming up with chef Jean-Christophe Novelli to front new ITV cookery contest The Heat. And we can expect more TV, radio and podcasting work, as well as snapshots of her party-filled life when she’s off the clock.
“I’m British, so I’m always going to be self-deprecating,” she says. “But I want to keep growing. I want to be that safe set of hands where someone makes a TV show and they think, ‘Oh, Olivia should host this’.”
And maybe — just maybe — she can find a way to blend her work and personal life by getting Brad, who makes an appearance on Bad Boyfriends, on camera beside her.
“I would actually be so down to do more TV together, and he’s definitely become a lot more comfortable on camera,” she says.
“But long-term, would I be able to get him into a career where he’s not talking about football? That might be more difficult.”
- Olivia Attwood’s Bad Boyfriends returns on Sunday at 9pm on ITV2.
Olivia credits her media success to being both fun and relatable, while also maintaining a strong sense of professionalism[/caption]
Brad and Olivia at a showbiz bash earlier this year[/caption]